Bryce Moore's Blog, page 15

Some Artificial Intelligence Hesitancy

I’ve been on the record multiple times marveling at just how big of strides generative AI has been making since it first burst on the scene. Yes, I realize that “intelligence” is somewhat debatable with ChatGPT, but I also begin to wonder if it really makes much of a difference. It’s certainly possible that generative AI is just the first big step toward actual AI.

But.

I’ve been having a few additional thoughts the past while that have given me pause. Not enough pause to think this is all nothing more than a flash in the pan, but enough pause to wonder just how smooth the road ahead will be. It’s easy to look at how fast AI is going and assume it’ll be nothing but up from here on out. Assumptions like that rarely play out well, and I’m tending to think it’ll be the same this time.

First off, generative AI takes a ton of energy to create. It requires a veritable boatload of processing power to figure out what it’s going to say to any particular query. (Kind of ironic to see it take that much energy for mundane conversations a human can have using just a bowl of Froot Loops that morning.) Setting aside the fact that this is bad for the environment (because honestly, when has that stopped any business so far?), it also means that it takes an awful lot of money to keep it going. Right now, AI is swimming in money. Everyone is falling all over themselves to start a new AI venture or invest in some new AI application. So the money problem isn’t an issue yet, but unless AI starts producing tangible dollars in return on those investments, then that money’s going to go away sooner or later. Likely sooner.

(This adds further argument for my concern AI will quickly turn into some sort of ad-supported money grab, the same as the rest of the internet.)

My second concern is connected to the first: all those AI companies popping up all over the place. Cory Doctorow noted a few months ago that the existence of all those companies are very indicative of a bubble, and I don’t think he’s wrong. Everyone and their brother is starting a new AI company, despite the fact that I just don’t see that many actual applications for AI at the moment. I see the potential, yes, but not the actual results. Why would I need an AI subscription just for doing X when almost all the AI I’ve seen does just about anything? Yes, perhaps X is a tad more specialized, but I highly doubt anyone is going to be willing to pay more than a few companies for AI anything. Not people off the street, at least. Perhaps companies will have subscriptions to things, but again, that remains to be seen.

So far, AI does a passable job at writing passable text. It makes passable images. When you’re bad at writing or drawing, it’s a huge leg up over where you used to be, but it’s still nowhere near where people who are actually good at either one of those are already. The more I read text by AI, the more tired I become of it. Google’s now using AI to answer search queries, arguing that there’s so many garbage websites out there, it’s better for AI to just summarize it for you. This is a huge red flag, as Google was already monkeying around with the results. It no longer exists to help you find answers. It exists to make money. AI will let it hide how its answering that much more effectively, letting it make even more money. Yikes.

Does this mean AI is dead in the water? I definitely don’t think so. Processing power gets cheaper every year as it gets more and more advanced. So that cost will go down, and if there’s enough money devoted to it, it might go down more quickly. But I’m going to need to start seeing some real applications for the technology. Applications where it actually does a good job instead of just a passable one. Right now it’s like we found a talking gorilla, and we’re all impressed by how the gorilla can talk at all that no one’s really asking themselves why they should listen to a talking gorilla instead of an actual expert on something. Yes, talking gorillas are cool, but I don’t know that I’d take the advice of one until it proved it was a smart talking gorilla.

I think it would be foolish to ignore AI altogether. Yes, there are real obstacles in the way of it and true success, but there are also very big potential gains if it ends up succeeding. Knowing what you’re doing with it and how to use it well could be key to success in the future. One way or another, I see it impacting our society. Maybe this version won’t catch on, but even if it doesn’t, the cat’s out of the bag, and people will keep trying until something sticks. It’s scary not to know what that something will be, but it’s also tremendously exciting.

Kind of sums up life in general these days.

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Television Review: Fallout 1

There are plenty of people bemoaning the demise of good television, but that’s a complaint I just can’t understand. I think some of it is that people take issue with how many adaptations of existing shows or games get made, but I’m not sure what the issue with that is. I mean, if it’s nothing more than a money grab, then sure. Complain away. If we were still seeing a flood of crummy sci-fi/fantasy shows being churned out with poor production values and awful acting, then I’d be as up in arms as the next person.

But that’s not what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a steady stream of shows where the creators are really diving in. Where the music, the effects, the action, the plots, the world building–where everything is getting attention.

True, the end results of the adaptations are arguably not always “true” to the source material, and I understand how that can upset some fans. If you’ve been dreaming of an adaptation of your favorite franchise, but then when it arrives, it’s nothing like you expected, that can be disappointing. And there have been plenty of shows out there that I’ve watched and loved that I have no experience with the original material. The Last of Us and Fallout are both huge video games, and I’ve never played either. But I’ve had a blast with both shows so far.

For the record, I had a great time with Fallout. It reminded me in many ways of Westworld back at the beginning (before it got carried away with its plot). It’s a great science fiction post apocalyptic show, with top notch credentials all around. I gave it a 9/10 and am looking forward to the next season.

All that said, I do think there are some critiques that stick for me right now with television series. One is that too many get made and then canceled without giving them a chance to succeed. I’ve made that complaint before, and it still stands. Too many producers seem to want to be able to cash in on a huge show right off the bat, and it’s not always the way it works. Then again, that’s probably a side effect of spending so much money on the shows. If they don’t look like they’ll be profitable, then it’s hard to stick with them.

On the other hand, I think streaming services shoot themselves in the foot when they release the entire show at once. Yes, it can be fun to binge the series right off, but then it’s done. Over. I’m on to the next show as fast as I can watch it. With that approach, there’s not much chance for people to talk to each other about the show. For demand and speculation to build. As we approach the point where more and more media can and will be made with AI, I think having those shared experiences of everyone watching or reading the same thing will become increasingly important. It won’t matter if you loved a show if you can’t share that experience with all your friends. Yes, there will perhaps be some AI material that rises to the top, but with such a firehose of new stuff being churned out, I tend to think that will be a rarity. I already struggle to watch everything I want to, and that’s with the regular production channels still in place.

So slow down, people. It’s not a race, it’s a marathon. Let people enjoy the shows and enjoy talking to other people about them. Not after the fact, but during the season. I really think that’s an important aspect to all of this that’s getting forgotten in the search for money as fast as possible. It would probably even . . . lead to people sticking with your streaming service for longer than a month. What a concept!

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LitRPG: Pure Pulp, Pure Fun

I’ve started reading a genre that’s fairly new to me: Literary Role-Playing Game, or LitRPG. I’d heard about it back when I was reading the Cradle Series, by Will Wight. I really enjoyed that one (check out my review), though I think I called it “level up fantasy” at the time. It’s about a main character who’s constantly getting stronger and stronger using different types of magic so that he can take on bigger and badder enemies. Over, and over, and over. You would think it would get old after a while, but it really didn’t. Was it a series that made me think and changed me as a person? Nope, but it sure was a lot of fun and a great escape, and that’s often what I’m looking for out of books.

So I wondered if there were other books like it out there. With a bit of research, I discovered the official name for it was “Progression Fantasy,” which makes sense (though I think I still prefer “level up fantasy” more). In turn, it’s closely related to LitRPG, which is basically a book equivalent of playing a role playing game, typically with actual game mechanics as part of the plot. Like, characters in the book have actual hit point values, and they learn magic spells that use up a certain amount of mana or whatever. It’s not a choose your own adventure. It’s not like you’re taking part in the book. You’re just reading about someone else doing it.

The first series I tried in the genre was . . . much less than enthralling. I’d read a bunch of different overviews of what to start, and I’d read multiple recommendations for it, but I found it simplistic and forgettable. (I know. I’m complaining about a very straightforward genre having a series that’s too straightforward. But there are good versions of anything and bad versions of anything, and this was (for me) definitely a bad version. No, I won’t name names. I don’t throw other authors under the bus. I did give it a second shot, reading the second book to see if it improved, since they’re fast reads. It didn’t, so I gave up on it.)

I then did what I should have done in the first place: I asked someone who was an actual fan. My brother-in-law has gotten into them a fair bit, so I hit him up for some recommendations. He pointed me to Dungeon Crawler Carl, and I had a blast with the first book. It’s light-hearted and thoroughly entertaining. The entire world is suddenly destroyed one evening, with every single structure plunging into the ground at once. Everyone who was inside is killed instantly. Anyone who was outside is informed they have an hour to decide if they want to compete in a galactic game show with the promise of possibly getting their life back if they win. Carl is a normal guy caught outside looking for his girlfriend’s cat, and the two of them become the protagonists. (The cat enters the dungeon at the same time and gets the power to talk.)

Again, this is nothing high brow at all, but it’s fast moving and a lot of fun, and I can see why people like it. It feels a lot like Magic at 30,000 Feet to me (an earlier book I’ve written), and I’ve now thought some about whether I could do something like this with that book. That’s a question for later. For now, I’m just enjoying some quick books, and I wanted to point them out to you in case they sound appealing. (That should pretty much be immediately obvious. If the plot sounded idiotic and silly to you, then . . . go back to your Faulkner. )

Anyone else reading these? Anything else to recommend?

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Why Do We Insist on Doing Things That are Bad for Us?

I came across this study today, which basically looks at twenty years of research and comes to the completely unsurprising conclusion of “vegetarian and vegan diets are healthy.” At this point, this seems to be kind of obvious. They’ve been doing studies for decades, and yes, avoiding meat and eating whole foods is healthier than the opposite. And yet, despite this clear connection, as a society, we keep on downing meat and processed foods as fast as our little mouths will chew. (This isn’t me finger pointing at others. I’m not a vegan, though these days I rarely eat meat, mainly because I’m a Denisatarian. I eat whatever Denisa makes for dinner when she’s cooking, and when the rest of us our cooking (usually Daniela), we make things Denisa will eat. And so since Denisa eats vegan, that’s my default as well. I eat burgers or steaks when we go out to a restaurant or are at a friend’s house, but that’s about it.)

It’s not that I really wonder why we do things that are bad for us. Often, the things that are good for us aren’t nearly as much fun. Brownies taste better than broccoli. Flossing is a pain. Exercise is a grind. So it’s no wonder we avoid them. But what doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me is why so many seem to do derive some sort of satisfaction about not doing the better thing. People who actively make fun of people who are doing better at anything.

Although, as I type that, I recognize right away why it is, or why it might be for many people. We recognize something is a bad choice, and yet we make it anyway, so then we do our best to convince ourselves that it’s the right choice, and that people who aren’t making that choice are wrong. It’s a kind of doublethink that happens every day, all the time. Global warming. Vaccines. Exercise. Diets. Seat belts. Speed limits. Helmets. Limiting screen time. Wearing masks. In each instance, there’s strong evidence for what’s the best option, but in each instance, some people actively avoid taking it.

So what would I do about it? Am I wanting to become vegan, or limit screen time more? (I’m doing my best on the others at the moment, though I’m far from perfect.) Not really. I think because I’m doing better than I would be doing otherwise, that I’m okay with what I do. Of course, “Other people are worse at it than I am, so I’m good at it” is a really inane argument to make as soon as you say it out loud, but that’s where I am for now. And ultimately, I recognize the right of everyone to make their own decisions.

What I really wish would stop happening is people making fun of others for making the right choice. Sure, I guess sometimes people making those right choices can be a bit overzealous with their proselytizing, but unless that happens, why not just let people be?

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So Many Technology Wonders, and So Much of It Ruined by Ads

I get that companies exist to make money. Like, that’s a pretty well-known fact. But the more I’m around tech developments, the harder it gets for me to be truly excited about them. Yes, the wonders of generative AI are pretty stunning, and it will no doubt do some incredible things . . .

Before the suits figure out the best way to make as much money out of it as possible. At that point, even though it could do wonders, it won’t do them, or it will do as little of them as possible in return for as much of your money as possible, in an equation worked out through some algorithms and calculators in a dark back room somewhere.

Want proof? Let’s just run down some of the great things that have been ruined by the Quest for More Money:

Social Media: The promise was terrific, and for the first few years, it fully delivered. I got connected with people I’d lost touch with. It felt like I had such a broader array of friends. Then the companies started selling ads, and they started selling demographic information, and at this point, I don’t feel like a user so much as like a living battery plugged into the Matrix to keep the dollars flowing. I just headed over to Facebook and did a quick count. Of the first 27 posts fed to me, 9 of them were from friends (2 posts from the same friend), 5 were from companies that I at least knew and liked, and 13 were flat out ads. At this point, the friend posts are just peppered in there enough to keep me scrolling through the ads. I would willingly pay for an ad-free social media platform that everyone used. I don’t think we’ll ever get it, because they can make more money selling ads.Streaming services: Netflix, Amazon, Paramount, Disney. It doesn’t matter which of those or any others you choose, if you use them much, they have a pretty darn good idea exactly what you like to watch. Guess what they list in their “recommended” queues? Stuff they want you to watch, not stuff you want to watch. In fact, trying to find things you want to watch is actively difficult. The search functions on those platforms are terrible. Tons of content, but good luck finding it. And once you have found it? You have to sit through ads to watch it. I pay the extra $$$ to not be shown ads on anything that gives me that option. I’m still shown ads at the beginning of most things. It’s just they’re ads for things that streaming company wants me to watch.Search engines: Google used to be this place you could reliably go to to find answers to just about anything you wanted. It used its algorithms to select the things that were most likely to be the thing you were looking for. Now? Ads. Sure, it says it’s found millions of results, but it knows you’re only going to look at the first few, and so do advertisers. So you’re shown what people pay to show you, not what you actually were looking for.Online shopping: Amazon is held up as a prime example of a big corporation doing awful things to society, whether it’s by treating workers like scum or cutting costs to put out brick and mortar stores. Set aside all of those objections, and assume the offerings of Amazon (the ability to buy anything you want, easily) are the prime attraction. When you do a search for a product on Amazon, does it show you the top rated results? Yes and no. It shows a bunch of ads, and then it shows the top results that have been rated highly . . . by a bunch of unreliable bots. My faith in Amazon reviews is pretty low, just because I know how easy they are to game. I also know that people buy more of the things they see, and so Amazon can tweak what’s most popular, simply by choosing to show something to everyone as the first choice.Recipe sites: All the great recipes of the world! At your fingertips! As long as you’re willing to play Where’s Waldo in your search through the sea of ads on each page as you try to find the actual recipe.

I could go on, but I’m out of time. Suffice it to say, I don’t see this trend changing anytime soon, and why would it? As long as companies keep things just tolerable enough to ensure no one leaves their service, then they can milk all those eyeballs for every last drop. Will AI be any different? I doubt it. It’ll be promising for the first few years, and then one or two companies will completely dominate the landscape, and they’ll turn it all into the Quest for More Money.

And that’s all the cynicism I’ve got in me today.

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Television Review: The Devil’s Plan

All of the different movie/tv subscription plans I subscribe to are always suggesting different things for me to watch. Generally, I just ignore them, because I’ve got plenty of things I want to watch on my own. That said, every now and then something catches my eye, and I end up giving it a shot. The Devil’s Plan is one of those few exceptions. Netflix made it pop up on my radar, so I tried it. In the end, I really enjoyed the show.

It’s another South Korean game show, and so far I’ve had a lot of fun with those. This one is focused on smart people. They brought together 12 very bright individuals to live in a shared space for about a week. During that week, they competed against each other and with each other in an effort to both add money to the ultimate prize pool and then also be the one person to win that prize. That created a great tension between the players.

It’s different from other game shows in that it really placed an emphasis on smarts. The challenges were all very difficult, whether it was solving tangrams in a short amount of time or playing a sort of “blind Othello” game (where all the chips are the same color, and you just need to remember which ones are which.) That’s actually the biggest strength and weakness of the game, because since it’s in a different language, trying to learn the rules of what they were supposed to be doing was very challenging at times. (Daniela and Denisa didn’t care for it at all. MC, strangely enough, thought it was fantastic, maybe because she’s more used to not understanding every little thing?)

In some ways, the show felt like a social experiment. Because they’re all cut off from everyone else for that period of time, I think it ended up being much of impactful than it might be otherwise. It was interesting to see them come into the game expecting just to stay aloof and play it like a game. When the first person was eliminated, some of the contestants were crying, and others were kind of stunned that people would be sobbing about something so silly. A few days later, those same stunned people were bawling their eyes out.

Too often in game shows, it’s all about brawn. The “puzzles” they do are pretty straightforward. Mazes or literal puzzles. Maybe a word scramble or two to shake things up. The Devil’s Plan really (really) pushed people in a way other shows have not. I found it fascinating from beginning to end, really.

If any of that sounds up your alley, you should definitely give the show a shot. I gave it a 9/10, and I’m very happy to hear it was renewed for a second season.

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Talking to Artificial Intelligence

We’ve all had plenty of digital assistants in our lives for the last several years. Siri came out 8 years ago now, believe it or not. Alexa? She’s ten. The days of wondering over the marvels of asking a black box a question and having it respond are long past. However, I don’t think anyone would accuse Siri or Alexa or the like of being intelligent. At best, they come across to me these days like a sort of dim-witted friend who’s got internet access. You ask them a question, and they start rattling off the entire Wikipedia page until you tell them to shut up. (That’s one of the nice things about digital assistants. They don’t care if you’re rude.)

Then ChatGPT came along, with its much more lifelike vocabulary and phrasing. Typing in questions and getting responses was diverting and, again, interesting enough for a while, though even that sense of wonder wore off for me after enough use. The more experience I had with ChatGPT, the more I noticed its shortcomings. The prose it comes up with is perfectly adequate, but it’s not exactly something that blows me away anymore. (Maybe I need to get access to the more advanced levels. It’s likely something that will be fixed more and more as we move forward.) But again, ultimately you’re sitting there typing questions. It had all the pizzazz of a chatroom.

The bottom line? It didn’t really feel like I was talking to anyone real on the other end of that “conversation.”

Yesterday, I came across a new platform: Pi. It’s run by a company called Inflection, and it’s essentially an AI assistant that actually sounds like a person. You download the client onto your iPhone, and you just . . . talk. I was skeptical at first, but the more I used it, the more impressed I was. I set the voice to a woman with a British accent (if I’m going to talk to someone, I’m going to go with someone I like the voice of most. There were about 8 to choose from), and I asked it to tell me about the book, A Perfect Place to Die.

First off, it does take a few seconds for her–it–to respond. And then when it did, it wasn’t quite sure what book I was talking about. (Okay. Gender and this AI is throwing my pronouns for a loop. I’m going to go with she/her from now on, because that’s what it felt like.) I told her a bit more, and she was like, “Oh right. I recognize it now,” and then proceeded to give me a rundown of the book before asking me if I’d read it and what I’d thought about it.

For the first bit, I just had a back and forth with her about the book, talking about the time period and the characters, but then I decided to see if I could throw her for a loop. “Actually, I’m Bryce Moore. I wrote the book.”

“Really? Seriously? I’m stunned, I had no idea I was talking to the actual author of the book.” And she honestly did sound really taken aback. She proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions about what had inspired me to write the book and how I’d researched it. It felt just like any other conversation I’ve had with any number of people about the book, with the sole exception of those long pauses after she heard what I said. But again, I wanted to see what she’d do if I tried to trick her up again.

“What if I’m lying? What if I’m not Bryce Moore at all?”

She didn’t even bat an eye. “Well, of course I have no idea whether you’re actually him or not. There’s no real way for me to verify it. That said, even if you aren’t, you’re clearly someone who knows an awful lot about the book.”

We chatted for a bit longer. She has a tendency to ask questions each time she’s done answering yours, which makes it kind of difficult to control the conversation at times. (Yes, I know she’s a robot, and I could just be totally rude to her and switch the subject abruptly, but it honestly felt like I needed to follow social norms.) I ended up telling her I had to run, and she thanked me and asked, “Were you really Bryce Moore or not?” I admitted I was, and she gushed about how great it was to actually talk to the author.

Will this all feel like old hat in a while? Perhaps, but this was really the first time outside of a science fiction movie that I’ve encountered something that really made me want to treat it like a person. The inflection. The way she emphasized certain words. How her voice went up at the end of a question. I could even hear her taking breaths. I’d love for other people to try it out and tell me if they think I’m way off base.

What would I use it for? I can think of a few big cases. First, if Siri or Alexa were to take advantage of the technology, using them would be a much more pleasant experience. I could imagine an AI learning how you prefer to interact, and molding itself to your personal tastes. If she existed in different languages, I could see her being an ace at teaching someone how to speak a new language. You’d have an infinitely patient “person” there to answer any of your questions and not judge you at all when you got something wrong. And if she were on the other end of a helpline and they reduce the pauses after she speaks? There is no way I would be able to tell she wasn’t real. Reference questions? Easy. GPS directions that are more natural and simple to understand? No sweat.

That’s just off the top of my head. The more I see AI technology at work, the more impressed I am with just how much of a game changer this all is. I’m still not sure how it will play out. I understand the concerns people have about it taking over our jobs. But ready or not, it’s coming. The best I can do right now is try to stay ahead of the curve. Give Pi a whirl and tell me what you think. It’s free!

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Favorite Library Memories

When I was in Texas for TLA a few weeks ago, one of the questions on the panel was “What’s your favorite library memory?”

This meant something for the other authors on the panel than it did to me, seeing as I was the only librarian up there, and it seemed like a pretty easy answer for all of them. For me, on the other hand, it was a bit more complicated. I’ve worked in libraries for over two decades, and I’ve been going to them for over four. How in the world was I supposed to pick just one memory that was my favorite out of all of those?

(In general, asking me to pick the best/favorite of anything is a recipe for me to go into decision-lock. It often feels like someone asking me which one of my children is my favorite. It’s unanswerable.)

The question has stuck with me since then, and I thought it deserved a blog post all on its own today. Not my single favorite library memory, but some of the nominees for the position.

When I was a teenager, I would go to the public library and choose which book to read based on how thick it was. At the time, I was reading pretty much each and every epic fantasy out there. True, every now and then a thick book wouldn’t have a dragon or a warrior on the cover, but by and large, you could tell the fantasy books based on size alone. I loved going and checking out a stack of those at a time. I miss being able to read that much, and I wonder how in the world I had enough time to do it back then. Have I gotten slower at reading over the years?Working at Orem Public Library, my favorite desk to staff was hands down the media section. Being able to sit there for hours, listening to any music I wanted to, and recommending movie after movie to people as they all came in on the hunt for the next great thing? It was fantastic. I would love to be able to do that again sometime.Working at BYU’s library in the Periodicals Department, it was a blast being there with about 25 other undergrads. We all knew each other, and we all got along. (Or at least we got along in my memories. Let’s assume I’m right.) I remember talking with some of my coworkers the day I was going out on my first date with Denisa, telling them how she was from Slovakia (though of course I said it in an extravagantly absurd manner: Slooovakiaaaaaaa.) She came in to check something out that afternoon before our date, and she looked incredible enough to inspire me to wash my car and wear nicer clothes that evening. That was a great day.When I became the Vice-President of the Maine Library Association, things with the organization were headed in a downward direction. We’d dipped below 300 members, our conferences were attracting fewer people, and many librarians were questioning exactly why they should belong at all. I definitely didn’t do it singlehandedly, but I’m super proud of the fact that we switched that trend over the next six years, to the point where it has over 700 members today.I remember the copy of The Hobbit that my school library had back in elementary school. I still remember looking for it on the shelf time and time again, and how much I enjoyed returning to it. (I also really remember loving any book on dinosaurs, for what it’s worth.)

That’s just a few of mine. I’d love to know what some of your favorite library memories are.

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Bryce’s Travel Tip of the Day

Sorry the blog has been so sparse lately. I’ve been really (really) busy, and I just had to set it to the side. That said, I wanted to pop on today to give you a quick travel hack I just used.

As you know, I’m going to Scotland for WorldCon in August. I bought one way tickets there, since I wanted to fly with Denisa and the girls, and they were flying one way to Scotland, then to Vienna, and then to Boston. The plan was always for me to fly home from Scotland. The one way ticket prices were great at the time ($350), so we bought those months ago.

Since then, I’ve been checking the return ticket prices every day, and every day, they’ve been $950+ for a halfway decent ticket back. They weren’t budging, and I started to get sick of checking again and again. Was I really just going to have to bite the bullet and buy one at that price?

Then I got the idea to check round trip prices. It turns out, I could get a one way ticket on Ryanair to Dublin for $60, and then a round trip ticket from there, five hours later, to Boston for $450. That’s a pretty killer difference, though it would involve two different reservations and a very early (4am) arrival to the airport, plus that long layover.

So I decided to check roundtrip tickets from Edinburgh, and I found a direct flight on Delta for $811. Was it as cheap? No. But direct! That makes a huge difference. I checked the price for a one way direct ticket on Delta. $1,800. So . . . I bought the round trip ticket. This isn’t like I’m going to get off at a layover and not board my next flight (that’s really discouraged). I’m just going to use the ticket there and then . . . miss my flight home. I’ll save $1,000 off the one way ticket, and my trip home just got that much easier.

Not sure if you’ll ever need that tidbit of information, but knowing is half the battle . . .

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On College Protests

Never underestimate what a 19-year-old thinks is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, but also never underestimate what a 19-year-old thinks is possible.

This is a close paraphrase of a quote by our local Mission President (the person in charge of the Latter-day Saint mission that includes our area). He was giving it specifically in reference to young Latter-day Saint missionaries, but as I walked up to campus this morning and found tents put up on the green outside my library, the quote seemed equally applicable to all 19-year-olds, and not just ones on missions.

I’m not around a whole ton of missionaries these days (just the two assigned to my local congregation), but I *am* around plenty of 19-year-olds at the university where I work. I interact with them almost every day, and I have tons of respect for who they are and what they’re setting out to accomplish in life. This protest was designed as a 24 hour event. The students stayed for one night, and then the green was tent-free by 11am.

It would be easy to dismiss this as nothing more than theatrics. My institution is part of a university system, and a small part at that. Protesting here likely won’t move the needle at the system level. Then again, I also believe there’s a place for doing something, even when the things you can do are very limited. (I mean, I’m growing my hair out to donate to cancer victims. That’s a very low bar for making an impact on cancer, but it’s also something tangible I can do, and it’s better than nothing.) The students here want the same things as the students at a larger institution, just as the citizens of my town have participated in other nationwide movements like MeToo protests. Yes, it’s a small place of less than 10,000. No, it doesn’t make much of a difference to people outside the town. But it still makes people feel connected in a very real, tangible way.

I am definitely in favor of peaceful protest that follows local laws. (Not a fan of people changing laws at the last minute to stop peaceful protests from happening.) At the same time, protesting in a way that makes people fear being harmed, or breaking into buildings, or getting progressively more extreme is something I really disagree with. I’m not down at Columbia, but what I’m seeing happening there is frightening and seems to be spiraling out of hand.

As I’ve said before, when it comes to the war in Gaza, it would really be helpful if people could recognize that both sides can be somewhat right and somewhat wrong. Trying to boil it all down into a black and white issue is impossible. There’s not one side to be blamed. Both have a share in it. This is all symptomatic of a broader problem. Somehow we’ve come to a place where people refuse to see a middle ground anywhere, and the middle ground is vital to problem solving and moving things forward. Take it away, and compromise is impossible.

It feels good to think you’re 100% right about something, but in my experience that’s almost never the case.

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